September 11 (a little late, part one)

Everyone has their September 11 story. I'm sure almost everyone in the the United States, and I would imagine in most of the Western world, can tell you what they were doing when they heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. They can tell you whether they knew someone involved, or knew someone who knew someone. They can tell you who they worried about, or wanted desperately to see, and what they did to respond to the tragedy. It was an event shared by a nation. We saw it unfold together. Because we all have our stories, and there are so many stories, and because some of the stories are so personal and real and tragic, any individual story, like mine, is just a tiny piece of the tapestry of September 11, 2001.

I wasn't surprised when it happened. I had been concerned for several years that the American people lived blissfully unaware of the possibilities of terrorism. When I mentioned to people that the US could be vulnerable to terrorist attack, people assured me that it was unlikely. This was despite Lockerbie, despite Oklahoma City, and despite the previous attack on the World Trade Center. It worried me to go to places like Disney World and not see any evidence of security, and I wondered how it could be that we felt so safe. So when it happened, I wasn't surprised. But I was deeply saddened, and I felt incredibly connected to what happened that morning. I also felt that I wasn't supposed to feel so connected or so sad.

I had spent nearly ten years of my career as a consultant. I spent so much time on planes that I can't even begin to enumerate the number of flights I took over those ten years. I knew what it was like to get up early to catch the early flight, and not even to consider it as dangerous -- just another way to get to work. As soon as I heard that the first plane to hit was a commercial jet, I knew immediately who had been on it. Business travelers and vacationers, families, and people hoping to see their families soon, flight crew and cabin crew. I was connected to them.

I have worked for living since Speed Racer and I were first married. I've worked for large and small companies, and when I worked as a consultant, I visited all kinds of office buildings, from New York skyscrapers to suburban office parks. When I heard that a a major office building had been hit, I knew immediately who had been there -- executives and custodians, administrators and consultants, trainers, and caterers, temps, and lifers, and everyone in between. People who were excited about being at work, people who were just putting in time, people whose career was their life and people who worked so they could enjoy their lives. I was connected to them.

On the morning of September 11, before the planes hit, a friend of ours died of cancer. On September 15, Speed Racer and I drove up to East Orange, NJ for her funeral. Driving along the New Jersey Turnpike toward the Oranges, you can see a beautiful view of Manhattan. That Saturday, smoke still rose from the crater where the towers stood. At our friend's funeral, the priest said that this was only the first of many funerals he would be conducting over the next few weeks, as many of the firefighters and office workers came from his parish. Seeing that column of smoke and hearing that priest cemented the reality of the event for me.

In 2001, I was working at our Malvern campus, and I had a long, but beautiful drive to work. There is a church on this route -- a church where, in October, was held the funeral of one of the pilots. Days before the funeral, TV network news trucks set themselves up outside this church. Again, another reminder of reality, that this was not an event that happened to other people on TV somewhere. These were neighbours of mine -- people I was connected with.